[The Citizen is publishing the following email as a letter to the editor.]

Imker running for Peachtree City Council Post #1.

Eric Imker says he’s fed up with the current “Big 3” (Logsdon, Plunkett and Boone) running things the way they are. Imker has decided to run for Peachtree City City Council Post #1.

If elected, he says he intends to vote on matters the way the ordinary citizens wants things. Simple things like no changing of zonings to satisfy developers, no idiotic traffic lights where there is nothing to gain except worse traffic for everyone, no developers giving excuses why they should add to an already stressed market place with additional empty boxes on/in the strip malls we currently have, no new taxes on businesses to squeeze an extra $10,000 a year out of them, etc.

Coming into the next budget year with over a $3 million shortfall out of an overall budget of roughly $25 million is no way to be running things.

The mayor and the other two council members who vote with him on nearly every issue have to go.

The gloves are off, Imker says. He says he will be pointing out every single vote where the current “Big 3” go against the citizens’ desires, resulting in further detriment to our good city.

Imker realizes the strategy involved here. He is running to replace Don Haddix, current city council member. Haddix is running for mayor and will give up the remaining two years as a council member to become mayor.

Imker will gladly accept only two years to help straighten things out.

Imker also realizes the council members up for reelection are coincidentally Mayor Logsdon and council members Plunkett and Boone, the exact three who Imker says form the trio who need to be ousted.

Vanessa Fleisch is running to replace Plunkett. After reading Fleisch’s opening salvo for City Council in last week’s Citizen, Imker realizes they agree the citizens have been poorly served over the last few years and hopes to bring a shift to the council voting block back for citizens’ concerns, not developers’.

The citizens of Peachtree City need someone who knows how to live on a budget, where to cut, how to do things more efficiently and how to say no to developers who ask for zoning changes to crowd more houses into spaces previously designated otherwise.

Everywhere you turn at City Hall, you see waste and, unfortunately, visible signs of insider deals.

Imker specifically points at some kind of quid quo pro between the mayor and the current city manager in dealing with their private real estate issues.

This is no way to show the public you are on the up and up. Mere appearance of impropriety should be considered off the table. Apparently the folks running the show just don’t get it, Imker says.

Why was every single penny in expected revenue budgeted without consideration of an economic downturn? Why, only now, are we hearing about ways to reduce the budget?

If these budget reductions could have been implemented years ago, guess what, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.

How does the mayor explain spending to give himself a trip to China when right around the corner we are looking at huge budget shortfalls?

Enough is enough. We need to return this city to our founders’ vision, Imker says. “Return to the Vision” will be Imker’s rallying cry.

Imker retired in 2007 and says he enjoyed his time off canoeing on Lake Peachtree, playing disc golf, visiting the Kedron field house and new Bridge gym for occasional basketball and table tennis and playing euchre, pinochle and dominoes with friends.

He is an engineer with a degree from San Jose State University in California, a Masters in Computer Systems and a graduate of the prestigious Department of Defense Program Manager’s Course near Washington, D.C.

Imker worked for eight years on the Star Wars program, managing Space Shuttle Mission 39’s primary payload, as well as a billion-dollar Star Wars satellite sensor program.

He says he will bring common sense to not only the public assets given to us by our city founders but will help manage the budget so that every citizen knows their tax dollars are being spent as efficiently as possible.

Imker lives in Ashford Park just a quarter mile north of City Hall. He and his wife Debbie have two grown children: Warren, who is an aeronautical engineer with NASA in Huntsville, Ala., and Valerie, who is an interior designer in Atlanta.

Eric Imker

Peachtree City, Ga.

[Imker is a member of the Peachtree City Recreation Commission, an advisory-only panel that has no spending authority.]